Vladimir Derevenko

Who was Vladimir Derevenko?

Vladimir Nikolaevich Derevenko (1879–1936)[1] was a Russian physician and surgeon who served at the court of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. Nicholas abdicated in March 1917 and was exiled with his family to the Siberian village of Tobolsk that August, a journey on which Derevenko and his family voluntarily embarked. In May 1918 the Derevenkos accompanied the Imperial family to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. They were prohibited from staying with the family inside the Ipatiev House (they stayed in a house across the street), though Derevenko was occasionally allowed to treat Nicholas's son, Aleksey Nikolaevich, who suffered from haemophilia. Derevenko's son, Nicholas, was Aleksey's best friend. On the night of 16/17 July 1918 the former Imperial family and four retainers were murdered by order of the Bolshevik government, one week after which the city fell to the anti-Bolshevik White Army, as the ongoing civil war reached its climax. Derevenko and his family remained in Yekaterinburg, where he practiced medicine and aided White investigators in their inquiry into the Imperial family's murder, until late 1918 when the Bolshevik Red Army recaptured the city and Derevenko moved his family to the White Army stronghold of Perm, where he taught at Perm University's hospital. The Bolsheviks regained the city the next year and the Derevenkos again relocated, this time to Tomsk, where he became head of the district military hospital.

He was arrested by the NKVD in the early 1930s and executed in 1936, during the Great Purge.